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Where do the children play?

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Re: Where do the children play?

#221

Post by johnnyanmac »

mlrtime wrote: post #133
johnnyanmac wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>our very civilization would need to change back to the era of every family having half a dozen or more kids. Let's try improving public transportation, making more walkable communities, and encouraging independent exploration first. If those don't work, then sure. We can try the Shinzo Abe initiative to make big families. Japan has had this issue for longer than the US, but it is not impacted the same way in terms o…

I wish people would come up with examples that are more than 'Just look at Japan'. Japan is great, and I think we could learn a lot from them. However, their society is extremely homogeneous (98%+ ethnically Japanese) with deeply shared cultural norms that have been reinforced over centuries. This creates a fundamentally different trust environment than what exists in diverse, multicultural societies.

Focusing on Japan is a non-sequitr. This is pretty much all of Asia and half of the EU.This isn't unique to them. Japan was only mentioned because it's probably the first country to have needed to make national population crisis initiatives (as the GP wanted to suggest).

>deeply shared cultural norms that have been reinforced over centuries

Yes and Americans had this too, once upon a time. We did a good job tearing that down in the last 60 years to push consumerism instead.

It took 60 years to get there, we aren't going to fix it overnight. And that's also part of the problem. No one wants to put the time in for the effort.

Re: Where do the children play?

#222

Post by johnnyanmac »

mlrtime wrote: post #107
johnnyanmac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't help. How is it semantic? They go outside and now they are running in a giant parking lot. They go a bit further and now you're a bad parent for not keeping an eye on your kid. Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. There's no winning here. >you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them. I don't consider a mall the eq…

Why is everything so black and white? Do kids need more places to run free, yes. Should they be running in mall food courts, no. Just because this trend of kids having less free play outside doesn't excuse parents of these kids from taking any space they want. Any reasonable person can see there are still boundaries, are we just disagreeing on what those are? Kids still can't/shouldn't run at swimming pools, it's bee…

>Why is everything so black and white?

because you see the effects but fail to trace the cause. I'm beyond tired of people attacking the symptoms but ignoring the cause.

Re: Where do the children play?

#223

Post by johnnyanmac »

master-lincoln wrote: post #78
johnnyanmac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't help. How is it semantic? They go outside and now they are running in a giant parking lot. They go a bit further and now you're a bad parent for not keeping an eye on your kid. Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. There's no winning here. >you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them. I don't consider a mall the eq…

If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I would argue you are a bad parent. That seems like asking for an accident. > Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. Yes. If this is the alternative to playing in parking lots that comes to your mind first, I really wonder what kind of experiences you had. > There's no winning here. Ever heard of parks?

>Ever heard of parks?

Yeah, my city did a great down tearing down amenities for the kids and yelling at kids to stay off the grass. I love my city.

Re: Where do the children play?

#224

Post by johnnyanmac »

rglullis wrote: post #94
master-lincoln wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I would argue you are a bad parent. That seems like asking for an accident. > Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. Yes. If this is the alternative to playing in parking lots that comes to your mind first, I really wonder what kind of experiences you had. > There's no winning here. Ever heard of parks?

I'm guessing you are talking with someone who is used to life in the North American suburbs, where kids need to be driven around and most of the options for activities are indoors.

Sadly, yes. The nearest park is 5 miles from me or the mall. The buses run on the hour and will get you within 2 miles of the park. They stop running around 7pm.

I wonder why more kids aren't at the park.

Re: Where do the children play?

#225

Post by lanfeust6 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #48
retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

You're more thinking suburban, or super rural. I grew up in a rural Welsh town (~3000 people), and was is walking distance of basically everyone we knew. I walked to school, to the pool, to the shops, my friends, everything.

Rural in Wales is not like rural in most of North America.

Re: Where do the children play?

#226

Post by TrackerFF »

When I grew up, in the late 80s/early 90s, we'd be outside like 90% of the time. This was in rural northern Europe, and from my memories, parents there just used to send their kids out. The few times we were allowed to be inside, we really had to ask nice.

Outside activities included playing soccer, biking around, exploring places, building stuff.

It is such a huge contrast to my peers / people my age are raising their kids now. Some of the parents are basically hovering over their kids from 7 in the morning to 9 in the evening. It's non-stop.

Re: Where do the children play?

#227

Post by rcpt »

pmg101 wrote: post #195
rcpt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Los Angeles we let our 8 year old walk half a mile to school and someone called the cops on us.

What did the cops say?

They followed them to school and told the teachers that someone called the police for escort.

There's nothing illegal about this and nobody got in trouble but it still sucks.

Re: Where do the children play?

#228

Post by resoluteteeth »

rayiner wrote: post #198
reeredfdfdf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a middle-ground between a big city and full countryside. I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it. School, friends and everything else I needed was within walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an issue.

Right. Most people in "rural" places live in small towns. My wife went to high school in a rural Iowa town with 2,000 people. You can walk from the high school to anywhere in town in 30 minutes.

A lot of older small towns are good but newer stuff tends to be built along highways with no other connecting roads, and more spread out

Also, a lot of the "rural" population in census data is actually living in outer suburbs and newer suburbs tend to be pretty unsafe for kids to walk/bike around

Re: Where do the children play?

#229

Post by dukeyukey »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #225
dukeyukey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more thinking suburban, or super rural. I grew up in a rural Welsh town (~3000 people), and was is walking distance of basically everyone we knew. I walked to school, to the pool, to the shops, my friends, everything.

Rural in Wales is not like rural in most of North America.

The post I responded to mentioned this:

> But so glad we stayed in London

So I figure they are UK based and not in North America.

Re: Where do the children play?

#230

Post by porphyra »

losvedir wrote: post #184
aitchnyu wrote: post #59

Umm, do most of those kids have distended bellies?

I was wondering about that, too. It means they're malnourished, right?

Apparently potbellies can be caused by:

* extreme protein malnourishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwashiorkor

* intestinal parasites

Given that the kids don't exhibit extreme wasting on their facial features and limbs, I would say it's probably the latter. Still really sad though, the poor kids!

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